


Blood Imari

by Isis



Category: The Machineries of Empire - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Halloween, ToT: Monster Mash, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 10:32:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8202190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: Kel Cheris observes the remembrance on the Day of Hollow Wine.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/gifts).



> Trick or Treat, Vass! Your prompt for 'remembrances on the hexarchate's version of Halloween', along with your suggestion of 'AU where Jedao is literally a ghost or a vampire', combined in my brain to irresistibly suggest this story - I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Special elliptical thanks to my mysterious beta-reader...

"I hate this," murmured Lieutenant Enbar, just barely loud enough for Cheris to hear. "Don't you?"

"Lieutenant," she said sharply; then she relented. "Yes, of course, but keep your voice down. It's an important remembrance. We must do our part." And as captain of the company, Cheris' part was the cornerstone of this ritual, the acknowledgment of the Day of Hollow Wine in the high calendar. At least they didn't have to watch anyone being tortured to death.

"As if we Kel would do anything less," Enbar grumbled, but she straightened and put her shoulders back, the posture of a proper Kel officer in front of her soldiers. 

Hiding her own trepidation, Cheris strode forward to the doorway of the building. On the boxmoth they had done this each year in ordinary rooms, reconfigured to the required six-sided shape for the purpose. It was hard to sustain a belief in the mysterious when one knew that the masked and robed figure was only the Rahal Doctrine officer, that the chamber beyond was only a boardroom or a lounge, decorated with symbolic stand-ins for the objects of importance. But now, on the station where this particular remembrance had originated, she felt suddenly as though she were a child, reluctantly allowing her parent to push her forward to make an awkward obeisance to an important personage, when she'd rather be doing something _interesting_.

The mask on the guardian of the chamber – it had to be one of the station's Doctrine officers, she reminded herself – gazed at her impassively. She would not flinch. It was only a man, or a woman, or – well, a person, anyway.

Cheris lifted her chin. "Trick or treat," she said, her voice steady, and pitched so that her company could hear her. 

The masked face dipped in acknowledgment, and a foil-wrapped candy was held out in a gray-gloved hand. Cheris took it, and the guardian stepped aside, letting her into the dim chamber beyond.

She stopped to let her eyes adjust to the candlelight. The prescribed candles, black and orange, were set into sconces on the wall. Between them, and slightly above, so that their glow cast shadows toward the ceiling, was the mirror. Its surface seemed strangely dark, and there was an odd quality to its sheen; it looked, thought Cheris, almost as though it had been coated in oil. And there under them was the actual black cradle, the casket that held the unnaturally immortal body of Shuos Jedao, the mad general who had committed mass murder against his own side as well as the enemy. 

In the fleet the meditation focus had been an undistinguished crate painted black by servitors, and the candles had cast their flickering light onto an ordinary mirror, taken or fabricated from stores. The effect was certainly creepy, though rather mundane compared to other, more serious, remembrances. This, though, was the real thing, and it exuded a quiet menace that would have made her shiver, had she been less in control of herself.

But she was Kel. She placed the foil-wrapped candy into the bowl set into the niche between the candles, and looked into the mirror. Her dark reflection gazed back at her. She exhaled once, then inhaled, and carefully, clearly, spoke the ritual words: "Blood Imari, blood Imari, blood Imari!" 

She removed the candy from the bowl, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. As she sucked on it (lemon-sour and honey-sweet, with a faint tang of spice), she wondered who the Imari had been, or what they had been. She didn't think they still existed, or at least, they weren't on any map she'd seen, or in any history she'd read. They must have done something heretical to have their blood invoked. Maybe it had something to do with the hollow wine that gave the day its name, whatever that was; how could wine even _be_ hollow?

A sudden dizziness overtook her. Her skin felt cold, though she couldn't tell if the coldness came from a chill in the air or her own body. Her thoughts came sluggishly, and she blinked, realizing that she'd somehow managed to look away from the mirror. That was an error, though not a disastrous one, and she quickly returned her gaze to her reflection.

Except it was no longer her reflection. Straight black hair with long bangs, a sharp, handsome face, and a scar on the neck above the collar...

A scar on _his_ neck, above _his_ collar. She was looking at her reflection, and it was a man looking back at her. No, she realized, not _a_ man. A particular man.

It was Shuos Jedao.

"My apologies," said a male voice. It seemed to come from the base of her skull. "What is your name?"

"Captain Kel Cheris, sir." Her response was automatic. In the reflection, Jedao's lips moved as she spoke. 

"So tell me why I'm here, Captain."

She almost retorted that she had no idea, only – she _did_ know. For the ritual was not merely a symbolic remembrance to observe an important date and fix it in the high calendar; it was a testing of the calendrical structure that enabled their exotics. It was easy to forget when one's observance was performed with makeshift props. But this was what was supposed to happen if the calendar was being undermined. This was the signal, and also the solution.

She lifted her chin and addressed the face in the mirror. "Calendrical rot, sir."

She felt her face twist into a smile, saw it in the mirror. "Well then," said the voice in her skull. "Let's go fix it."

**Author's Note:**

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_%28folklore%29


End file.
